Despite having mocked my toe shoes and putting me into a position where my knowledge of Sleepless in Seattle was insufficient, Tim Schafer has to be on this list.
Day of the Tentacle has been amongst my very favorite video games for far too long, and is probably the first example I encountered of “auteurship” in the medium of interactive entertainment. That game had a distinct comic voice to me. It allowed you to poke around and hear very good jokes while you worked your way through a time travel adventure that sublimely utilized variations on the same location, the Maniac Mansion in three different eras, and included its own predecessor within it. That is truly one of my favorite things a video game can do, have other games within it to make their world feel that much more alive.
Day of the Tentacle was also a social game for me. I played it with my childhood friend David on his family computer and we did not use a guide. We just put our heads together and tried things in order to solve that game’s mysteries. It seemed so vast, with so many objects and characters and options that it lasted months. Now when I play it, a handful of hours is all it takes, but there is still a joy in seeing that art and hearing that voice acting.
I also admire Tim Schafer for his use of developer commentary. The nature of the adventure game allows for it I suppose, but you get a little more life out of those games by having the cozy experience of hearing him talk about them as you replay them.
Grim Fandango has the unfortunate problem of being a beautiful game hampered by the 3D graphics of its era. Thankfully, it was remastered, so one can appreciate its best aspects more cleanly now. While I deeply love the fusion of noir films with the visual motif of the Day of the Dead, it is also the game that has the most obtuse puzzles, or at least my brain and how it works encounters friction when playing it. That “adventure game logic” stands out to me the most here, as I wanted to see the story unfold and the journey of these characters play out but I just wasn’t putting the pieces together. The newer version has hints implemented to keep things moving, but this is a game I believe could be argued as Schafer’s masterpiece but I am not the one to properly make that case.
Psychonauts is the one I hold in the next highest regard to Day of the Tentacle. It features the warm and fuzzy backdrop of a week at summer camp and then populates it with characters so distinctive and rich with personality that their minds become the majority of the game’s levels. The idea of a kid’s game focusing on mental illness is really marvellous to me. You get the paranoid world of 1950s espionage, a man with delusions of grandeur, believing himself to be Napoleon, a black velvet painter hung up on bullfighting, and so much more. War trauma, a diva of the theater, and the infamous meat circus jump to mind as well.
Its sequel, Psychonauts 2, is a game I’m saving for a rainy day, as it were. I feel I will need it to counteract a dismal period in the future. I don’t want to waste that one on a blaise season.
Tim Schafer’s sense of humor and his way of weaving all manner of allusions into his work to give them a rich character is why I have gathered all of his projects and hope to have more pleasant, cozy gaming times in the future. While I have played through Full Throttle, I hope to deepen my appreciation of it with its remaster. That Schafer was able to receive permission to revisit his LucasArts works and bring it under the Double Fine banner is one of the great things to happen in gaming this century. I’m so happy this catalog of fine, funny games are easily accessible to new audiences now. My time of buying collections of his work from the UK on Ebay are hurdles no one needs to bother with now. I hope people take advantage of this ease of access and spend time with these games, they are very much worth it.
Thank you Tim.
